On October 18, 1967, Fidel Castro gave a stirring, powerful and deeply moving speech in memory of his friend and comrade, Che Guevara, who had been murdered as a captured, wounded soldier a few days earlier.
There have been flawed translations of this speech, but here we have worked with multiple sources to present it.
Speech by the Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz at the solemn evening in memory of Commander Ernesto Che Guevara, in the Plaza de la Revolución, on October 18, 1967
It was a day in the month of July or August of 1955 when we met Che. And in one night - as he tells in his accounts - he became a future expeditionary of the "Granma". But at that time that expedition had no ship, no weapons, no troops. And it was like this, along with Raúl, Che joined the group of the first two on the list of "Granma".
Since then 12 years have passed; They have been 12 years full of struggle and history. Throughout those years, death cut short many valuable and irreplaceable lives; but, at the same time, throughout those years, extraordinary people emerged from our Revolution and there were forged among the men of the Revolution, and between these men and the people, bonds of affection and bonds of friendship which go beyond all possible expression.
And tonight we gather, you and us, to try to somehow express those feelings in relation to who was one of the closest to us, one of the most admired, one of the most loved and, without a doubt, the most extraordinary of our revolutionary comrades; to express those feelings to him and to the heroes who have fought with him and to the heroes who have fallen with him, his internationalist army, which has been writing a glorious and indelible page in history.
Che was one of those persons for whom everyone immediately had affection, for his simplicity, for his character, for his sincerity, for his comradeship, for his personality, for his originality, even though we still did not know the other singular virtues which characterized him.
During those first moments he was our troop’s doctor. And so the bonds were forged and the feelings of comradeship arose.
He was imbued with a deep spirit of hatred and contempt for imperialism, not only because his political background had already acquired a considerable degree of development, but because he had only recently had the opportunity to witness in Guatemala the criminal imperialist intervention of the mercenary soldiers who ruined the revolution in that country.
For a man like him, not many arguments were necessary. It was enough for him to know that Cuba lived in a similar situation, it was enough for him to know that there were men determined to fight with weapons to change that situation, it was enough for him to know that those men were inspired by genuinely revolutionary and patriotic feelings. And that was more than enough.
This way, one day, at the end of November 1956, with us, he started the march towards Cuba. I remember that that journey was very hard for him since, given the circumstances in which the departure was organized, he could not even provide himself with the medicines he needed and he spent the whole voyage suffering a serious asthma attack without a single chance of relief, but also without a single complaint.
We arrived, we started the first marches, we suffered the first setback, and after a few weeks we reunited - as you know - a group of those who remained from the "Granma" expedition. Che continued to be a doctor of our troop.
The first victorious combat took place and Che was already a soldier of our troop and, at the same time, he was still the doctor; the second victorious battle took place and Che was not only a soldier, but the most distinguished of the soldiers in that action, performing for the first time one of those singular feats that characterized him in all actions. Our strength continued to grow and a battle of extraordinary importance was fought at that time.
The situation was difficult. The information was in many ways wrong. We were going to attack in full daylight, at dawn, a strongly defended position, by the sea, well armed and with enemy troops to our rear. Not far away, and in the midst of that situation of confusion in which it was necessary to ask of the men a supreme effort, comrade Juan Almeida took up one of the most difficult missions, but one of the flanks was completely devoid of forces, was left without an attacking force, which could endanger the whole operation. And in that moment Che, who was still a doctor, asked for three or four men, among them a man with a machine-gun, and in a matter of seconds he quickly set out to take on the attack mission from that direction.
And on that occasion he was not only a distinguished combatant, but he was also a distinguished doctor, assisting wounded comrades, while also assisting wounded enemy soldiers. And when it was necessary to leave that position, once all the weapons were seized and a long march began, harassed by different enemy forces, it was necessary to leave someone to stay with the wounded, and Che remained with the wounded. Helped by a small group of our soldiers, he took care of them, saved their lives and later those men joined the column.
From that moment he stood out as a capable and brave leader, the kind of men who, when faced with carrying out a difficult mission, do not wait to be asked to carry out the mission.
So he did during the combat of El Uvero, but had also done so on an occasion we haven't mentioned. It was during the early days when as a result of a betrayal, our small troop was attacked by surprise by several planes and when we retreated under the bombing and had already walked a fair distance, we remembered some of the rifles some peasant soldiers who had been with us in the first actions had left when they asked permission to visit their relatives at a time when there was still not much discipline in our incipient army. And at that moment there was the possibility that those rifles were lost.
We remember how after we just raised the issue, and under bombardment, Che volunteered to quickly leave to recover those rifles.
That was one of his essential characteristics: the immediate, instantaneous willingness to volunteer himself to carry out the most dangerous mission. And that, of course, aroused our admiration, our double admiration, towards that comrade who fought with us, who was not born in this land, who was a man of profound ideas, who was a man whose mind was full of the dreams of struggle in other parts of the continent and who had that altruism, that selflessness, that willingness to always do the most difficult task, to risk his life constantly.
This is how he earned the rank of commander-in-chief of the second column organized in the Sierra Maestra; This is how his prestige began to grow, as he began to acquire his reputation as a magnificent combatant which he took to the highest levels in the course of the war.
Che was an unsurpassable soldier; Che was an unsurpassable leader; Che was, from a military point of view, an extraordinarily capable man, extraordinarily courageous, extraordinarily aggressive. If as a guerrilla he had an Achilles heel, that Achilles heel was his excessive aggressiveness; it was his absolute contempt for danger.
Our enemies claim to draw conclusions from his death. Che was a master of war, Che was an artist of guerrilla warfare; he demonstrated it countless times, but he demonstrated it above all in two feats, one of which was the march from the Sierra Maestra to Santa Clara, at the head of a column pursued by thousands of soldiers, on an absolutely flat and unknown territory where he achieved – like Camilo – a formidable military feat. He also demonstrated this in his lightning campaign of Las Villas, but above all, in his audacious attack on the city of Santa Clara, which he entered with a column of barely three hundred men, while it was defended by tanks, artillery and several thousand soldiers.
These two exploits established him as an extraordinarily capable leader, as a master, as an artist of revolutionary war.
The artist may die, especially when he is an artist of such dangerous art as the revolutionary struggle, but what will not die in any way is the art to which he dedicated his life and to which he devoted his intelligence.
Is there anything extraordinary in the fact that this artist died in combat? What is even more extraordinary is that on the countless occasions when he had risked his life, throughout our revolutionary struggle, he had not died in combat. We have had to intervene more than once to prevent him from losing his life in minor actions.
And so, in a fight, in one of the many battles he fought, he lost his life. We do not possess sufficient information to be able to make any deduction about all the circumstances that preceded that combat, about the degree to which he could have acted in an excessively aggressive manner, but, we repeat, if as a guerrilla he had an Achilles heel, that Achilles heel was his excessive aggressiveness, his absolute contempt for danger.
This is where it is difficult to agree with him, because we consider that his life, his experience, his ability as a seasoned leader, his prestige and everything he represented while alive, went much further, incomparably further than the assessment he made, perhaps, of himself.
The idea that men have a relative value in history, the idea that causes are not defeated when men fall and that the impetuous march of history does not stop and will not be stopped
by the death of leaders, could have profoundly influenced his conduct.
This is certain, this cannot be questioned. This demonstrates his faith in men, his faith in ideas, his faith in example. However, as I said a few days ago, we would have wished with all our hearts to see him forge victories, to see them forged under his command, under his direction, because men of his experience, of his stature, of his truly exceptional capacity, are very rare.
We are able to appreciate the full value of his example and we have the absolute conviction that this example will serve as encouragement and will serve to bring men similar to him from the heart of the people.
It is not easy to combine in a person all the virtues that were in him. It is not easy for a person to spontaneously be able to develop a personality like his. I would say that he is one of those kind of men who are difficult to match and practically impossible to outclass. But we will also say that men like him are capable, with his example, of helping men similar to him to emerge.
The point is that it is not only the warrior what we admire in Che or the man capable of great feats. What he did, and what he was doing, that fact of facing with only a handful of men an entire oligarchic army, instructed by the US advisers supplied by US imperialism, supported by the oligarchies of all neighboring countries, that fact in itself constitutes an extraordinary feat.
And if you look in the pages of history, you will not possibly find any case in which someone with such a small number of men has undertaken a task of greater importance, in which someone with such a small number of men has undertaken the fight against such considerable forces. This proof of self-confidence, this proof of confidence in the people, this proof of faith in the ability of men to fight, can be sought in the pages of history, and yet nothing similar will be found.
And he fell.
The enemies believe they have defeated his ideas, defeated his concept of guerrilla warfare, defeated his views on the armed revolutionary struggle. And what they achieved was, with a stroke of luck, to eliminate his physical life; what they did was to achieve the accidental advantages that an enemy can achieve in war. And that stroke of luck, that stroke of fortune we do not know to what extent was helped by that characteristic to which we referred before of excessive aggressiveness, of absolute contempt for danger, shown in so many combats.
This happened also in our War of Independence. In a fight in Dos Ríos they killed the Apostle of our independence. In a fight in Punta Brava they killed Antonio Maceo, veteran of hundreds of combats. In similar combats, countless leaders died, countless patriots of our independence war. And yet, that was not the defeat of the Cuban cause.
The death of Che - as we said a few days ago - is a hard blow, it is a tremendous blow for the revolutionary movement, as it deprives it without any doubt of any kind, of its most experienced and capable leader.
But those who sing victory are mistaken. Those who believe that his death is the defeat of his ideas, his tactics, his concepts of guerrilla warfare, his ideas, are wrong. Because this man who fell like a mortal man, like a man who exposed himself so many times to bullets, is a thousand times more capable as a soldier, as a leader, than those who with much luck did kill him.
However, how should revolutionaries face this adversity? How should they face this loss? What was Che's opinion if he had to make a judgment on this subject? This opinion, he made it, he expressed it very clearly in his message addressed to the Tricontinental [conference of Latin America, Africa & Asia ed.], when he wrote that wherever death comes upon him, let it be welcome, provided that his war cry reaches a ready ear and another hand reaches out to grasp his weapon.
His war cry will not reach a ready ear, but millions. And it is not one hand, but millions of hands, inspired by his example, that will reach out to grasp the weapon.
New leaders will arise. Men, with receptive ears and reaching hands, will need leaders who will emerge from the ranks of the people as they have emerged in all revolutions.
It is not that we consider that in practical terms his death will have an immediate repercussion in the revolutionary struggle. that in practical terms for the development of the struggle his death may have an immediate repercussion. But it is that Che, when he took up arms again, was not thinking of an immediate victory, was not thinking of a quick victory against the forces of the oligarchies and imperialism. His spirit of an experienced fighter was prepared for a struggle that would last five, ten, fifteen or even twenty years if necessary. He was prepared to struggle for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, all his life if necessary. And it is with this perspective in time that his death, or rather his example, we must say, will have an enormous repercussion, an invincible force.
Those who cling to a stroke of luck try in vain to deny his capacity as leader as well as his experience. Che was an extraordinarily capable military leader. But when we remember Che, when we think of Che, we are not thinking mainly about his military virtues. No! War is a means and not an end, war is an instrument of the revolutionaries. The important thing is the revolution, what matters is the revolutionary cause, the revolutionary ideas, the revolutionary objectives, the revolutionary feelings, the revolutionary virtues!
And it is in this field, in the field of ideas, in the field of feelings, in the field of revolutionary virtues, in the field of intelligence, apart from his military virtues, where we feel the tremendous loss his death has meant for the Revolutionary movement.
Che established himself as an unsurpassable man of action. But he was not only an unsurpassable man of action. Che was a man of profound thought, of visionary intelligence, a man of profound culture. That is to say, he united in himself the man of ideas and the man of action.
But he possessed another quality, which is not a quality of the mind, which is not a quality of the will, which is not a quality resulting from the experience of struggle, but a quality of the heart, because he was an extraordinarily human man, extraordinarily sensitive. That is why we say, when we think of his life, when we think of his conduct, that he constitutes the singular case of an exceptional man capable of combining in his personality not only the characteristics of the man of action, but also those of the man of thought, of the man with the purest revolutionary qualities, of a man of extraordinary human sensitivity, to which were united a character of iron, a will of steel, an indomitable tenacity.
That is why he bequeathed to future generations not only his experience, his knowledge as a remarkable soldier, but also the works of his intelligence. He wrote with the virtuosity of a classic. His war writings are unequaled. The depth of his thought is impressive. He never wrote a single thing without extraordinary seriousness, extraordinary depth; and we are certain that some of his writings will go down in posterity as classic documents of revolutionary thought.
And so, as a result of that vigorous and profound intelligence, he left us countless memories, countless stories that, without his work, without his effort, could have been forgotten for ever.
A tireless worker, he did not know a single day of rest during the years he served our homeland. Many were the responsibilities assigned to him: as president of the National Bank, as director of the Planning Board, as minister of industries, as commander of military regions, as head of economic, political or fraternal delegations.
His multifaceted intelligence allowed him to undertake any task with confidence and certainty no matter how difficult. And so, he brilliantly represented our country in numerous international conferences, just as he brilliantly led the soldiers in combat, just as he was a model worker at the head of any of the institutions that he was assigned to run. , And for him there were no days of rest, for him there were no hours of rest! And if we looked to the windows of his offices, we could see the lights remained on until late at night, while he was studying, or rather, working and studying. Because he was a scholar of all problems, he was an tireless reader. His thirst to embrace human knowledge was practically insatiable, and the hours he snatched from sleep were devoted to study; and the days that were supposed to be days of rest were dedicated to volunteer work.
He was the inspirer and the greatest promoter of volunteer work which today is the activity of hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country, the driver of this activity which becomes stronger and stronger every day among the masses, among our people.
And as a revolutionary, as a communist revolutionary, truly a communist, he had infinite confidence in moral values, he had infinite confidence in the conscience of men. And we must say that in his conception, with absolute clarity, he saw from the moral springs the fundamental lever of the building of communism in human society.
Many things he thought, developed and wrote. And there is something that must be said on a day like today, and that is that the writings of Che, the political and revolutionary thinking of Che will have a permanent value in the Cuban revolutionary process and in the revolutionary process in Latin America. And we do not doubt that the value of his ideas, of his ideas as a man of action, as a man of thinking, as a man of moral virtues, as a man of unsurpassed human sensibility, as a man of irreproachable conduct, have and will have a universal value.
The imperialists sing victory over the guerrilla who died in combat; the imperialists sing victory over this stroke of luck that allowed them to eliminate such an extraordinary man. But the imperialists ignore or perhaps pretend to ignore that the character of a man of action was only one of the many facets of this fighter’s personality. For our part, we mourn not only the loss of a man of action, but the loss of a man of exceptional qualities, a man of marvelous human sensitivity, and we mourn the loss of this intelligence. It hurts us to think that he was only 39 years old at the time of his death, it hurts us to think of how many fruits of that intelligence and experience in growth we have missed the opportunity to witness in its full potential.
We are aware of the importance of this loss for the revolutionary movement. But this is precisely where the weakness of the imperialist enemies lies: they believe that by liquidating the physical man one can liquidate his thought, his ideas, his qualities, his example. And they believe it with so much imprudence that they do not hesitate to publish, as the most natural thing in the world, the almost universally accepted circumstances in which they killed him after having seriously wounded him in combat. They did not stop at the imprudence of admitting it. They divulged it as if it were a right of henchmen, oligarchs, and mercenaries to kill a seriously wounded fighter.
And the worst part is that they go so far as to explain why they did it, claiming that the trial in which they should have judged Che would have been terrible, claiming that it would have been impossible to put such a revolutionary in the dock.
And they did not hesitate to make his remains disappear either. And whether it is true or
false, the fact that they announced that they had cremated his body begins to prove their fear, begins to show that they are not convinced that by having killed the physical life of the fighter, they killed his ideas and his example.
Che did not fall defending any other interest, defending any other cause but the cause of the exploited and the oppressed on this continent; Che did not fall defending any other cause but the cause of the poor and the humble of this Earth. And the exemplary and selfless way in which he defended that cause is something that not even his most bitter enemies dare to dispute.
Before history, men who act like him, men who do everything, and give everything for the cause of the humble, grow every day; every day, they enter more deeply into the hearts
of the people. And this, the imperial enemies are beginning to perceive. And they will soon realize that in the long run, his death will be like a seed that will give birth to many men determined to follow his example. We are absolutely convinced that the revolutionary cause in this continent will recover from the blow it has received, that the revolutionary cause will not be defeated by this blow.
From the revolutionary point of view, from the point of view of our people, how should we look at the example of Che? Do we think that we have lost him? It is true that we will not see new writings again, it is certain that we will not hear his voice again. But Che has left the world with a heritage, a great patrimony, and we, who knew him so closely, can be heirs of his heritage.
He left us his revolutionary thinking, he left us his revolutionary virtues, he left us his character, his will, his tenacity, his spirit of work. In a word, he left us his example! And the example of Che should be a model for our people, the example of Che should be the ideal model for our people!
If we want to express how we aspire our revolutionary combatants to be, our militants, our men, we must say without hesitation of any kind: Let them be like Che! If we want to express how we want the men of future generations to be, we must say: Let them be like Che! If we want to say how we want our children to be educated, we must say without hesitation: We want them to be educated in the spirit of Che! If we want a model of man, a model of man that does not belong to this time, a model of man that belongs to the future, I say with my heart that model without a single stain in his behavior, without a single stain in his attitude, without a single blot on his performance, that model is Che! If we want to express how we want our children to be, we must say with the whole heart of vehement revolutionaries: We want them to be like Che!
Che has become a model not only for our people, but for any people in Latin America. Che brought to its highest expression the revolutionary stoicism, the spirit of revolutionary sacrifice, the combativeness of the revolutionary, the working spirit of the revolutionary, and Che took the ideas of Marxism-Leninism to its freshest, purest, most revolutionary expression.
No man like him in these times has taken the proletarian internationalist spirit to its highest level!
And when one speaks of the proletarian internationalist, and when one looks for an example of the proletarian internationalist, that example, above any other example, is the example of Che! In his mind and in his heart the flags, the prejudices, the chauvinisms, the selfishness had disappeared, and his generous blood he was willing to shed for the fate of any people, for the cause of any people, and he was willing to shed it spontaneously, and ready to shed it instantly!
And so, his blood was shed on this earth when he was wounded in various battles; His blood for the redemption of the exploited and the oppressed, of the humble and the poor, was shed in Bolivia. That blood was shed for all the exploited, for all the oppressed; that blood was shed for all the peoples of America and spilled over Viet Nam, because there, fighting against the oligarchies, fighting against imperialism, he knew that he was offering Viet Nam the highest expression of its solidarity!
It is for this reason, revolutionary comrades, that we must look to the future with firmness and with determination; it is for this reason that we must look to the future with optimism, and we will always seek inspiration in the struggle, for tenacity, for intransigence in the face of the enemy and for internationalist sentiment. This is why this night, at the end of this impressive ceremony, of this gathering which testifies to the great sensitivity of this people, to the recognition of this people, of the way in which this people knows how to honor the memory of the courageous men who fall in combat, of the way in which this people knows how to recognize those who serve them, of the solidarity of this people with the revolutionary struggle, of the way in which this people knows how to brandish and raise ever higher the revolutionary standard and principles; today, at the end of this gathering, at the moment of paying this homage, all our thoughts turn to Che, and with optimism for the future, with absolute optimism for the definitive victory of the peoples, we say to Che, and, with him, to the heroes who fought and fell at his side:
Until victory, always!
Homeland or death!
We will win!
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